Though Time Fails
by Kyogakura
Summary: A law-bound Severus Snape has finally found a way out of his current predicament. However, his way out becomes a way in when a Potions accident finds him and Hermione Granger in the beginning of a story that starts at the end. SSHG. WIP. Post-war. EWE.
1. Chapter 1 - The Shit that Recurs

Though Time Fails

A/N – This was written almost a decade ago. I'm revamping and finishing it now. I'm sorry it took this long but I needed to grow up quite a bit in the last decade. This will be my apology to the world.

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Chapter 1 – The Shit That Recurs

 _Fuck_. Of the times that he had lost control, this word particular had been his mantra. It wasn't crass to say that everything now had been _thoroughly fucked up_. Ergo, the fact that his mantra was being repeated a hellfold over, just meant that things had gone fucking awry.

Shadows kept dancing upon the stone wall as a small light flickered in the corner of the room. The telltale smell of what could only be described as wet iron and damp shit hung limply in the air – not quite suffocating but not the list bit comfortable. Smoke was everywhere, thinly veiling the atrocity in the room. A mute clunking sound can be heard as it echoed in the stone walls of the dungeon. A very shameful and angry clunking sound.

The sound was made by a boy no taller than 5' 8.

 _'Fucking bloody fuck!_ ' he thought over and over although he did not realize that he kept on muttering it under his breath. This goes with just how much he notices everything else in the periphery. He didn't actually notice his muttering as much as he didn't notice his current state of being.

His fume-soaked robes hung limply across his frame like damp cloth would upon a clothesline. His shoes just barely hung on for dear life as they seemed a few inches longer than they ought to be. On his face was plastered an expression which crossed between a scowl and a grimace.

Just who could this boy be?

The boy was of medium height and of slim build. A hooked nose, albeit not so prominent on his adolescent face, graced his openly annoyed visage. On the top of his head was a very greasy looking mat of shoulder-length hair. Said hair was already pressed to the back of his head as he kept running his hand through it. By this description, who else could he be? Whoever he was, he was definitely pissed.

 _'Where was the wrong in this?_ ' he thought wildly. He was careful in mixing the potion. He followed every safety precaution ever mentioned to wizardkind. He even stirred it clockwise four and a third counts a minute for a bloody fucking hour! Dammit! Why did this happen?

Let's have a look at what happened ten minutes ago shall we?

He stood there over a platinum cauldron holding a stirring rod at one hand and a wand in the other. He was stirring a peculiar potion that was sure to be crucial in the next few years of his miserly existence. He added virgin's blood that was to neutralize the effect of the reduction of doxy wing and basilisk scale in order to make them into a bonded compound. He stirred. He cast a charm every 42 seconds as was required. He stirred again, religiously now. He then added the last ingredient that was the most crucial of all.

The sap of Ymir.

He almost winced when he touched the precious substance. He touched it as if that would be the death of him. As the amorphous substance fell into the cauldron, a small hissing could be heard. That was expected, he grinned to himself. What he didn't count on was the attending bout of violent bubbling and a bright flash of light. The cauldron and its contents went flying in all directions and to the Potions Master himself.

As one thing leads to another, we therefore find ourselves ten minutes in the future we stumbled upon.

He kept on pacing and cursing and pacing and cursing. The process became neither tireless nor temporary.

However, as comfortable as he was in his pacing and contemplative cursing, a turn in the proverbial wheel of fate seemed all too necessary.

"Sev – " Hermoine Granger came into the room and into an accident that still managed to surprise her. In the middle of the dimly lit room stood her brooding husband to be. Rather, in the middle of the room stood a teen aged replica of her husband to be.

There, in the middle of mischief and mismanagement is where we start a story that begins at the end.


	2. Chapter 2 - The Trope at the End

Though Time Fails

A/N: Here's the second chapter. I hope it sheds more light than the prologue.

Disclaimer: No money. Not mine.

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Chapter 2 – The Trope at the End

There's been only one person for the last three years.

To the woman that Hermione Granger has become, who that person is remains to be vague. Not that tangibility is an issue; it never was to begin with. But from here, let me paint you a picture.

Kismet. It's the hackneyed event that keeps on happening in our heads. We rehearse it – that special moment when everything falls into place and everything just makes sense. But it never does. Consequently, that moment of cosmic harmony never happens. We just make do with what happens around us and call it the workings of fate.

Now let's say, by pure circumstance, the cosmic energies aligned and produced a near-perfect machination of fate that allowed you to find something valuable. This thing, a concentration of abstract concepts, just happened to be someone else. Suddenly, everything made sense; the oily pork dish, the pre-teen acne, physical chemistry. All of these things caught meaning in that one shining moment, when your attention only centered on that one person.

The moment of meaning condenses into understanding – something close to love but not yet, not quite. Then it stops. That person passes and you are left to wonder what happened. Consequently, everything makes no sense, just like before.

Bluntly put, a moment of kismet just happened to pass by. Maybe you'll do something about it, maybe not. But for sure, whether you did something or simply lay there doing virtually nothing, you'd be walking in the lines fate weaved for you. Of course, you'll never know.

Just like how Hermione Granger doesn't know the strange manipulations the world had lined up for her on this particular day.

The boy left the quarters following her entrance. He barreled through the adjacent room cursing the high heavens about the mishap he had in his dingy little laboratory. Who wouldn't anyway? Anyone in his or her right mind would too if you found yourself turns twenty years younger. Although some would rejoice to find the wear and tear of age has given them, the peculiar boy that just ran past her seemed most displeased of this particular reversal. As she stood there by the door of that tiny room in Spinner's End, a frown crept across her face.

"Severus, what did you do?" she called out while inspecting the crusted cauldron that inhabited the putrid room. She vanished what was left inside and proceeded to clean up the room as best as she could. No answer came from the next room but a presence can be felt lingering just beyond the door.

The silence was deafening. She had nights like this during the war, when Harry and Ron couldn't be bothered with strategy building and idle talk. Moments like these were what she dreaded most and even now, three years along, her heart hitched up just so.

"I may have…miscalculated," came the response from the boy with cold dead eyes. By his tone, what he wanted was a time for himself to sort out the mess he stumbled upon himself.

"I figured as much. Being that as it may, what do you plan to do with this?" she said this all with a plain face as she finished the final charms to free the room of its misery. The boy's look of silent anger greeted her as she looked up.

"I would prefer it if you'll leave me to my own devices, Ms. Granger," he said flatly while eyeing her wand and consequently her efforts in minimizing the damage in the room.

"I prefer it if my efforts of coming here would not be welcomed by an invitation to leave, Severus," she retorted sternly.

His name intoned by her voice always sounded a tad bit hopeful and he languished in the moments when it happened. Of course, he would admit that to no one save himself. In the past three years that they have acted in accordance to the infernal Magical Binding Act, the admittance to attraction always seemed too much of a fan fair in his regard.

The Magical Binding Act was a sham cooked up by the Ministry of Magic to avoid resurgence of Voldemort's supporters after the war. The Traitor Act, as it was notoriously dubbed, offered rehabilitation and amnesty to all of the Dark Lord's supporters given that they would share crucial information for the capture of most, if not all, free Death Eaters and friends. All the known supporters were thrown into a mosh pit of torture day in and day out, once trial have proven their allegiance to the proverbial Dark Side. What came after as amnesty was nothing more than magical binding and constant supervision under a willing lackey of the Ministry. As it goes, fair trial was a thing borne of myths and legends and Severus Snape was on the receiving end of such fan fair.

He found himself in this predicament when he found life where it shouldn't have existed. As he found himself dying in the Shrieking Shack, a hand pulled him out of the grave he was in. Such hand belonged to one Hermione Granger who quickly salvaged whatever she can out of Poppy Pomfrey's stores and ran to his side. For whatever purposes it served, she saved his life but what came after only made him more embittered than he already was.

His rude awakening came three weeks after a blood restorative and a muscle mending potion denied him of his death. When he woke up half drugged and half the embodiment of a bruise, he lashed out. The only recipient of his anger had been Neville Longbottom who had apparently stood vigil by his bedside when Miss Granger had to attend her own share of political and civic duties. It was all he could do to remain inside his armor of scowls and sarcasm when word got in that his trial would succeed his awakening.

The trial had been bloody. The farce was nothing more than physical bludgeoning even when all the information that he knew was already laid bare for everyone to see. Nothing was enough for the public that wanted their grief to be taken over by anger. Anger for the loss of their friends and family – anger that could only be lawfully directed at the traitors that sided with the dark Lord.

Of course, Harry Potter and friends stood by his side during the trial but to his non-surprise, the Order members that were placed high up in the Ministry did not side with him. For their own political favor, they let one of their own suffer under public scrutiny. This was nothing to him by the 6th round of his trial. Not when almost all his teeth fell off from the physical abuse. Not even when his bone was broken and restored and broken again. Apparently, nothing could break an already broken man.

With whatever dignity he had left, he dragged his body back to the cell provided for him. He nursed his pain with thoughts of Lily Evans smiling down on him for a job well done. He knew that he had regressed during these trials. However, hope was a fickle friend to have. On his 10th trial session, Hermione Granger came waving a Certificate of Eligibility to handle a reformed Death Eater. That particular certificate had his name on it. With his last shreds of sanity, he took Granger's offer of a law-bound life removed from the pain of hoping for death in his tiny cell at Azkaban.

"My apologies, Miss Granger. As much as I would like to accommodate your preferences, I think that my problem would not be solved by either of us today," he intoned while gesturing toward his younger body. By the looks of it, he seemed just a little over the age of sixteen or seventeen. As the first wave of panic already rescinded a few moments ago, a decent conversation can now be held by him.

"I sensed from the bind that you have been exposed to a rather strong magical effect. Being that I trust you not to tamper with your bind, duty precedes my reason with regard to you," she eyed him wearily, taking in the sight of his younger self more clearly.

The bind that she mentioned was situated on his left forearm. Three inch-thick black lines that represented the body, mind and magic. A fourth ring would mean the soul but that bind would be breaching all ethical values of the magical community. The three rings also graced her left forearm but in the shade of red. Whatever he does, she will know as instantly as if she were the one who did it. This was how the law was acted. It was this binding, or the torture and subsequent death of the inmate. The release of these rings can only be done by the Minister for Magic or of death. If either of them dies by suicide, the other would die as well. This strengthens the need to rehabilitate and also made people more reluctant to bind a Death Eater. A double win by the Ministry if there was ever any. Although she had repeatedly lobbied for Snape's release on the grounds of evident rehabilitation, Kingsley Shacklebolt would not even hear a word of it. Even her friends got tired of lobbying after a few years. Even Ron abandoned her cause as easily as he had supported it.

"I would rather that you would stop raking in my appearance, Miss Granger. As you would see, today's mishap is nothing to blow your balls over"

She raised an eyebrow at him. He was twenty or so years younger and he called this predicament _nothing to blow one's balls over?_

"As much as I would like to plead with you, I have to reassess my current situation. Also, I need to clean myself as you have already done wonders for my meager laboratory. I think you can find your way out of my confinement," he turned and proceeded to his private room just to find that Granger had tailed him there as well.

"Severus, I don't think I can be lenient about today's mishap. You are bound to me, body and magic. If anyone finds out about this, I would have to say farewell to my current position at the ministry,"

"Miss Granger, if the magic released from my experiment was as strong as you make it out to be, we both know that it would not be you standing there glaring at me," he replied nonchalantly. Of course it would be someone higher up the food chain, she knew that.

"If anything, I would just self-diagnose. This could just be a potion-induced glamour much like the Polyjuice. I trust that you would not deny me of this?" he gritted out. How the world turned on him that he had to ask permission from someone else to do the most basic of things.

Out of defeat, Hermione sighed. The stubborn man in front of her didn't survive this long by being stupid. She knew now, after all the years she practiced growing up, that she would not get an answer from the man in front of her.

"I will leave you to it now, Severus. However, do not delude yourself that I do not know what substances were in that potion of yours. You were only allowed to brew because I allowed it. Do not make a mockery of my trust," she traversed the short distance from his doorframe to the porch.

"Tonight, you will come to my house to submit the report. No excuses. God knows I have some explaining to do with your current _youthful_ appearance. As if I don't have enough explaining to do as to _why_ I even allowed you freedom to brew in the first place," she continued her tirade until she popped out to who knows where.

He lied of course. He was bound to her and he knew that she knew what he was getting on about. Perhaps the shock from seeing his younger self prompted her to just completely shut it out. He noted that her panic started only at the end of their passing confrontation. He would have to devise a plan to hide his current predicament from prying Ministry eyes.

However, her presence was not helping him in any way.

Not now when he wanted her more than he wanted his freedom.

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A/N: I'm planning to finish this story with a promise. What do you guys think?


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